Spider Saturday: The Desert Recluse
Folklore stories are still alive in the West. People share tales of a mythical spider, a deadly menace looking for its next unsuspecting victim. “A single bite from this eight-legged beast will cause your skin to fall off!” or so they say. These campfire tales always seem to be told by those who’s best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend had to go to the hospital after being bitten and ended up losing a hand to the reaction of the venom. Or something like that. I worked with two men who were excited to tell me of how they survived an encounter with this spider and killed it, as if it was a dragon they slayed. If it was any other spider, it wouldn’t have been a story worth telling, but they were talking about a brown recluse! That’s like saying “Voldemort” to students at Hogwarts. It instills fear in people like no other spider I know.
Yet, the brown recluse (Loxosceles reclusa), also called the violin spider, isn’t common in California. I’ve been in SoCal for over fifteen years and haven’t seen one. My friends haven’t seen one. In fact, Rick Vetter, an entomologists at University of California, Riverside, has gone as far as saying that the the brown recluse being a part of the Californian spider fauna is a myth. In his online op-ed, Myth of the Brown Recluse: Fact, Fear and Loathing, he states that there are “no populations of brown recluse spiders [Loxosceles reclusa] living in California.” (Check it out – it’s worth the read.)
But there are other spiders from the Loxosceles family living in California. The South American violin spider (L. laeta) moved here from Chile and never left (a common story for many living in California). Its range is very small: specimens have only been discovered in Sierra Madre, Alhambra, San Gabriel and Monterey Park, which are all just a stone’s throw from where I live here in Arcadia.
The only native Californian Loxosceles is the desert recluse (L. deserta), which is the spider in the spotlight this Saturday. I found this specimen in Joshua Tree National Park last October. I was with a friend on an insect photo hunt and we discovered it on a fallen joshua tree. This particular specimen measured about 3-4mm and the color can be described as beige. The identifiable “violin” pattern on its cephalothorax (the first body part to which the legs attach) is muted. In fact, I was only able to see the pattern (and ID the spider) after inspecting these photos. All recluse species are most likely equipped with means to inflict a necrotizing bite, but since only the L. reclusa is the only recluse heavily studied, toxicological differences among the various species including L. deserta are not well known. I was only able to take a handful of photos before it scurried away.
Rick Vetter has created a handy guide for identifying brown recluse spiders. I suggest you take a look.
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